IN THE BEGINNING.

I've got plans you see. Thinking ahead.

In essence, looking forward and backwards at the same time.

And, it always starts this way: me scribbling, staring out the window, walking around like the living dear, bumping into things and lost in some sort of fog.

The beginning of a new book.

From the start, I had plans to make three of them, as somehow,( and I wish someone could explain this.) trilogies just seem to work for me. I more often than not will draw,paint, whatever, several times in variations of a theme until I am either satisfied that the idea has been fully covered or I simply run out of steam.

The thing in mind was something I call "The Dream Suite". A kind of vaguely interlocking series of books that complement each other while remaining self contained.

I am as I write this as a kind of public service announcement, getting down to the nuts and bolts of just what it is I want from myself this time. I've been playing with it for months and months right now. I may have stated before,( I really don't go back over what I have done here.)

That I planned to begin this book last september, and though events conspired against me as far as that was concerned, The basic template has been running around my head since late '09.

It's about damn time I got to it.

I put an enormous amount of energy thought into what and how I want to do with the basic idea and tend to malinger over the slightest details until am satisfied that everything is just so before I begin. Then of course it veers off into uncharted territories almost instantly. But I have a sort of over-mind control of the book so that I can pull back from dead ends and other little side trips when it goes to far off track. I like to be surprised as much as you do, but I have a responsibility to maintain control of the material so something like what I wanted to begin with comes out the other end of the pipe line.

So, here goes "OPIUM: variations for quill and vapor."

See you all on the other side of sanity.

M.Z.